[jboss-user] [JBoss Portal] - Re: User Input Req for 2.6 Usability and UI enhancements

[Frozen4Time]

I think the biggest thing that is needed for the portal is a WYSIWYG style page layout.  While I think the current tree view in the admin portlet is a nice way to get a big picture view of "what is where" in the portal, it's not very intuative or user freindly.

Some of the other portals (EXO for example) has a way for you to visually edit the layout of the page.  Dropping things is place using a visual layout engine.  To be honest I haven't seen a open source portal that really does this great, but I have seen some that are a step in the right direction.

When I am building pages in jboss, I usually open two browser windows, one with the admin portlet and another showing the page I am trying to build.  Everytime I make a change in the admin util I refresh the page I am building to see the results.  I have seen other people using this same approach.  This tells me that people really want a visual editor with (semi) instant feed.

Part of this request might entail making some sort of layout infrastructure beyond what JBoss Portal has to offer.  What I mean is giving the user the ability to layout arbitrary containers with customizable sizing properties.  For example giving them a container that will layout portlets in row or column order, being able to specify the number of rows or columns, specifying pixle or percentage widths to these containers.

Combining these two ideas would give the user to create any layout they desire and do so in a user friendly way.  The current JBoss Portal layou engine locks the user into a predefined structure and the layout utility is not that user friendly.

While I abosutely love the stabilty, reliablity and general quality of the JBoss portal, I see this as one of the biggest areas I would like to see improved. 

Thanks.

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